generous_cat_wyvern t1_iybqmwc wrote on November 30, 2022 at 5:16 AM

Reply to comment by Nagisan in ELI5: why is using "goto" considered to be a bad practice in programming? by Dacadey

>functions send the program to another line of code but then return back to the line the function is called from once the function is done.

Except for when Exceptions are thrown, but I guess that's why they're called Exceptions :p (I actually don't know if that's the reason, I probably just made that up) But even Exceptions propagate up a call stack in a predictable manner.

As an aside, it blew my mind when I found out that in ASP.NET, redirects happen by internally throwing a ThreadAbortException behind the scenes that can't be handled by normal means. It made sense that code after calling redirect didn't execute, and the only way to have code behave that way is if an Exception is thrown, I just never put two and two together.

Nagisan t1_iybrn9u wrote on November 30, 2022 at 5:26 AM

Exceptions can open up a whole pandora's box in the flow of a program. I can't speak for every language (because there's lots I don'tknow), but at least with what I'm most familiar with the function does return to the line it was called from depending on how you handle the exception.

In the case of your function catching the exception, you can fail gracefully by logging an error, at which point the program will continue and the function will return to the line that called it then just chug right along (if the result of the function wasn't necessary for the program to continue).

In the case your function doesn't catch the exception, it will bubble up to the place it was called from and repeat this process (if the exception is caught at the higher level, my second paragraph happens, otherwise it bubbles up again, repeat until something catches the exception or the program reaches the main function and crashes).

So yeah, exceptions can be the oddity here, but they also can continue to work the same as no exceptions when it comes to the flow through a program.